


Mind Over Body

by slbc



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Bending (Avatar), Bending Horror, Gen, I didn't set out to write horror, Pre-Avatar: The Last Airbender, Worldbuilding, but it ended up being creepy, but it kind of is, like its not really that creepy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:02:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27318205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slbc/pseuds/slbc
Summary: Firebenders can lose their inner fire. This is well documented, if you know where to look.Waterbenders can not lose their water. Earthbenders can not lose their earth. Airbenders can not lose their air. Why should they? It isn’t part of them.What they don’t tell you, is that they can lose their bending, their connection, their sanity, their will to live.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Mind Over Body

**Author's Note:**

> Hey people. This was inspired by a fic I read where Katara lost her waterbending. This connected to other elements losing their bendings, and it went from there. Hope you enjoy.

Firebenders can lose their inner fire. This is well documented, if you know where to look.

Waterbenders can not lose their water. Earthbenders can not lose their earth. Airbenders can not lose their air. Why should they? It isn’t part of them.

What they don’t tell you, is that they can lose their bending, their connection, their sanity, their will to live.

* * *

As much as Toph would like to brag, she has not been the first blind bender. She has not been the first to use her bending to help see. No one knows this, except a dead woman without bending at the end of her life.

Rinzen is born blind.

Her eyes are unseeing, an otherworldly quality to them. The cloudiness in her eyes only tint the natural gray color lighter.

She is coddled as a baby. After all, she is blind. By the time she can talk, no one helps her, having long learned that she can move on his own.

Rinzen tells no one how she sees. People assume that she simply knows her surroundings well. But she feels the currents, how they move in a room, how they slide around pillars, the subtle warmth they have when near a fire or person. It takes her a while to realize that seeing people can’t see around objects.

It’s a simple stretch to see inside crevices, but she gets there. By the time she is 8, she can see inside boxes. By the time she is 10, she can see the whole room, inside and out. But it soon bores her. By the time she is 12, she can use the wisps of wind from under doors to see into that room. By the time she is 14, she can feel blurry outlines of what are in the rooms. By the time she is 16, the outlines are crisper.

It isn’t until she is 24 that she realizes if she can feel the air currents in the next room using her own room’s currents, there isn’t any reason why she just can’t see further. But once you think a thought, you can’t take it back.

She starts thinking what's in the next room, and the next room after that. In the middle of conversation she trails off before picking back up. The temple elders note that she walks around in daze.

It’s too much information, just thinking out further and further. And her head aches and aches, and the thin wisps of wind feeding her information bloom into people walking in the courtyard that way in that direction and that far away, is too much.

There is a story of an Air Monk who has no bending, and is happy for it. When asked why she doesn’t have it, she smiles, and says too much knowledge. No one understands, and she doesn’t bother to explain.

* * *

Water is push and pull, push and pull.

Nukilik has always been a powerful bender. Towering waves, ice far colder than simple snow, colder than the depth of the oceans, colder still. He has always been ambitious, pushing to conquer more villages, to do more than defend their village in the south, to be the greatest waterbender that has been and will be.

His sister, Alasie could not have been more different. A quiet voice, a suggestion or two, she has always been his voice of reason. A kind woman, taking care of those sick, even without the gift of waterbending like her brother.

They have something unique. A sibling bond, built on trust, faith, and conviction. A pull to his push. Then Alasie dies from sickness. Nukilik doesn’t emerge from his hut. A few days later, he is seen rushing to the ocean. He loses his pull, and starts pushing.

Push and Pull. Push and Pull and Push. Push and Push and Pull and Push and Push. Push and Push and Push and Push and Push no more. Something breaks in him.

Nukilik sits in his hut all day, but will come out if you ask him. If you mention waterbending to him, he stares at you blankly, eyes glazed over.

He dies young for a waterbender, in a raid from another southern tribe. Warriors come seeking vengeance, but also for the bragging rights of taking down the great Nukilik, a title no one will remember.

Within a generation, the village is no more, everyone dead or moved away. Nothing remains but death and lost memories.

* * *

Earthbenders need earth. When separated from it, their bending starves. But it can be fed back up slowly, brought back with proper meals.

There is something much worse, much worse than simple starvation.

Chin the Conqueror had always known he would go on to do great things. He was the best, and no one could take it away from him. Even at his lowest, no one could stop him from doing more. He had the willpower rooted deep in the earth, and the power to back him up. No one could beat him, not even the Avatar. He would conquer the continent, enemies falling like so many towers.

That is, until he meets the Avatar. He scoffs at her airbending. Why should he fear this mere bender, mingling with common criminals. No Avatar would ever stoop to such levels. But Kyoshi starts mixing in earthbending with the airbending. He is wordless. Immovable not from will, but from fear. Creating a new island, tearing down into the foundation of the earth, and moving the immovable.

No one ever questions why Chin the conqueror falls off a cliff, made of earth, when he has earthbending. A simple matter of rooting oneself and the earth beneath it.

That’s because he doesn’t have earthbending. What do you do when the foundation of your belief is shattered, blown to pieces so that only fine dust remains, draining down, down, down. Chin’s belief of greatness, of the mandate of spirits, of the mandate of himself, all gone. Either your mind shatters with it, or you lose something else, the will to bend.

* * *

The first lightning bender did not learn them from the Lion-Turtles. She learned them from nature. She is the first person to survive being struck by lightning.

Xue-Lee remembers heat, and unimaginable power flowing through her body. She also gains intuitive knowledge of the experience. She understands the balance of energy, both positive and negative chi, separate them, and let it flow.

But this is not enough for her. She needs more, that rush of energy within. That power. She looks up at the sun, and wonders if that haze would match the one she felt.

She notices that everyone contains bottled lightning. Barely there, on the edge of fading, racing up and down arms and legs and through the head, whirling thoughts fueled by it. Almost too fast to notice, little wisps almost as fast as light.

So she feeds those little wisps to be more. And it feels good, and she is powerful, then it fades. The next time she feeds the little wisps a little more. And a little bit more after that and more and more.

When the local milk seller comes around for his weekly drop off, he finds a dead body. He shrugs. Not his problem.

* * *

There is one Avatar that is not part of the cycle.

Da-Gao has always been slightly off in the head. Nothing too big, but weird obsessions. He keeps the peace fine, because most leaders find him mildly amusing and terrifying at the same time. His insistence on eating only even amounts of fire flakes before noon, and odd numbers after it is generally well known. His fondness for rock candy is similar to one mad king of Omashu.

One day, he gets it in his head, to go up. To keep going up.

So he starts. He gathers up air, and pushes. And pushes and pushes and lets air flow up and up and up. Buildings shrink, He can see streams flow into rivers and down to the ocean. He looks up, and the moon barely grows.

The air grows thin, so he gathers air around him. Higher up he goes, and he can see the entirety of the Fire islands. Higher up still, and even higher than that.

Then he has the realization that he is out of this world. With this, the World Spirit rushes away, back into the cycle, bound to the world. But Da-Gao is still going up as the air gathered around him disperses.

Out in space, a body floats, and will continue to do for all eternity.

* * *

_“One is always considered mad when one perfects something that others cannot grasp.”_  
― Edward D. Wood, Jr.

**Author's Note:**

> So that's it, hope you enjoyed it. This is the result of the mish mash of ideas I had about random thoughts coming together.


End file.
